


Three Days

by tangerinabina_de_archanea



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe- Angels, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Garon is fun to write when he's not about to turn into a sludge monster, Mild Blood, VERY loose use of Hel's curse, but i won't say what kind of ending it is because that's a spoiler : ), listen she didn't give me rules on a laminated piece of paper so i made my own, oh and Xander gets a mention too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 23:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20072509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangerinabina_de_archanea/pseuds/tangerinabina_de_archanea
Summary: Garon, a general of Naga's army of angels, faced Hel in battle.He had fought, and he had failed, and he had fallen.Emmeryn won't let him give up.





	1. Day 0

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NyeLung](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyeLung/gifts).

> Happy Birthday Cassian!!  
Pls forgive me for giving you angst on your birthday FLDJSLFKJSD

“I do not want your help, Emmeryn. The heavens have humiliated me enough. It is my time.”

Garon could barely hear her difficult steps in the mud over the rain pouring down on him, soaking him and chilling him to the bone. The droplets formed puddles around him, and one beneath him, where he could see his reflection. A broken man peered back, still young, yet aged by battle and pain. Pale blond hair hung messily in clumps, scattered across his forehead and hanging nearly down to his chin, grizzled with the beginnings of a beard. His broad shoulders heaved as he gasped for breath, clutching at the wound in his side. His clothes, once pure white, were plastered to his skin by the rain, and slowly turning red with the spreading blood. 

The worst travesty was his wings. Once shining and coated with soft white feathers, they now looked charred and burned, with the feathers that weren’t already gone slowly turning black. He had fought, and he had failed, and he had fallen.

Also reflected in the puddle was a faint glow, emanating from her approaching figure. The young angel trudged forward, slowly moving through the mud. “Garon, please. Let me help you.”

“No!” he roared, not knowing where the energy for his refusal came.

"Garon.” Her voice was calm and measured. She was standing in front of him now, her face reflected upside down in the puddle, framed by bedraggled gold curls, and concern disturbing her otherwise calm expression. “I love you. I won’t let you die.”

“Leave me. I am your enemy now.”

“You are not.” She knelt next to him, mud staining the hem of her dress. “It is not too late for you. Even if Naga cannot see it, I can-“

“Leave me,” he repeated. “I was too weak. I belong to Hel now.”

“No.” The word was simple, but powerful, and it echoed in his head. It was too much for him, and he collapsed into her waiting arms, letting unconsciousness take him as he stained her with blood. The last feeling he could remember was her warm wings sliding around him, sheltering him from the downpour.


	2. Day 0- Earlier

The battle against Hel had been a long and difficult one. Garon was one of Naga’s most favored generals, with an unmatched record of victories, but even this was taking its toll on him. Even so, the thought that he could lose had never once crossed his mind. Perhaps that was the key to his downfall. 

He had been facing Líf, one of Hel’s generals, when it happened. They had crossed swords many times before, and Garon had to admit that he admired Líf’s tenacity. Just like Garon, he refused to give up, no matter how dire the circumstances. He fought as a man who had nothing left to live for but bloodshed. The difference between them was that Garon never lost, or, at least, that was how it had always been. On that day, Líf was fighting more ferociously than ever, and in doing so, distracting him from the true enemy. 

Garon felt the cold touch of Hel’s cursing seeping through him before she even spoke the words.

“In three days, your life will end.”

It felt as if she had truly frozen him with how he was immobilized, trying to catch his breath. Líf took advantage of the opening to thrust his sword into Garon’s abdomen, but he barely felt it. 

* * *

After battle, Garon’s usual custom was to go among his wounded soldiers, encouraging them as the healers did their work. Protecting mortals from Hel was no small feat, and every day it seemed that the number of fallen and wounded grew ever higher. Garon knew this, and so he did what he could to keep morale up. 

That was where he met Emmeryn. She despised battle, preferring talk and compromise to violence and war, but battles happened regardless, and so she healed instead of fighting. Over time, his greetings for her had evolved from a nod, to a bow, to a kiss on the hand, to a kiss on the cheek, to a kiss on the lips. That day, however, he laid neither a kiss on her lips nor his eyes on her. Instead he saw Naga, her eyes full of pity, and heard her words tumble from her lips harsher than stones crashing against each other. 

“I’m sorry, Garon. You must leave.” 

He could feel the eyes of the other angels upon him as he walked to the edge of Naga’s domain, branding him as a failure. His weakness humiliated him.

* * *

Emmeryn had waited for him, long after her work was done. He must have been busy, she reasoned, and hadn’t the time to visit the wounded. That was uncharacteristic of him, especially considering the heavy losses they had sustained, but it must have been important enough to keep him away. Still, she missed him, and how reassuring his presence was among his soldiers. His passion was infectious, and his kindness enough to soothe any wound a healer could not fix. He was as fierce in his love as he was in his battle. 

Even so, he cared much for his pride, and she knew that it must have been damaged after that day’s loss. Perhaps that was why he stayed away.

Eventually, she stopped waiting and started attending to her other duties. He would come home tonight, she was sure. He always did, wrapping her in an embrace and kissing her until they both forgot all of the day’s troubles. She didn’t need to worry.

That is, she didn’t think that she needed to worry until she saw Chrom.

“Emm!” He ran up to her, face flushed from exertion and expression worried. “I’ve been… looking everywhere for you. Emm, it’s Garon… he…” Out of breath, he bent over and struggled to get the words out. 

“Chrom? What happened? Is he alright?” Her blood ran cold as the possibilities of what happened, each worse than the last, cycled through her head.

“Hel cursed him.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “He’ll be alright.” It was uncommon for Hel to curse generals, but she often targeted lower angels. Even they were powerful enough to break the curse with time, and so Garon, being much more powerful, should have no trouble.

“Naga sent him away. She said that he wouldn’t be able to fight it.” 

“What?” Her heart dropped to her stomach. Before Chrom could reply, she turned and ran, heading for the borders of the heavens, where storm clouds roiled and the sky sang with thunder. 


	3. Day 1

When Garon woke, he was in a soft bed with softer hands gently tending to his wound. His clothes had been done away with, he had been dried off, and a blanket had been laid across his lap, keeping him decent and providing a small measure of warmth. Rain pattered on the roof and windows, but inside a fire crackled and spit sparks, occasionally sending tongues of flame dancing upward. He didn’t know where he was, but Emmeryn was bent over him, cleaning his wound gently with a soft cloth. It took a few moments for it to strike him as odd that she wasn’t using her stave. 

“Emmeryn.” His voice was rough and labored, as if it hadn’t been used for a hundred years. It hurt to speak her name.

“Shh.” A hand, half-coated in his blood, reached up to smooth his hair back in a soothing motion, streaking red across his forehead and hair. “Don’t waste your strength speaking.”

“I… told you-” She shouldn’t be here. He was cursed, doomed to become one of Hel’s mindless minions, one of the countless fallen angels he had fought for millenia. Her presence was dangerous folly, in his opinion. She needed to let him go.

“Shh.” She was gentle, but firm, and he knew this wasn’t a battle that he could win. For once, as he laid back and closed his eyes, he surrendered willingly. She was unshakeable, and he knew it. “I tried to treat your injury with a stave, but it wouldn’t heal. I assume it’s the curse’s doing…” She grew quiet for a moment. “You can fight this, Garon. I know you can.”

“Even Naga…” He winced as he spoke. His wound already felt as if it was nearly healed, but painfully and wrongly. Speaking made it ache.

“Doesn’t believe in you?” she finished. “That doesn’t matter. I do.” She set aside the cloth she was using and leaned forward. “There’s never been a challenge I haven’t seen you rise to. Why is this one different?”

“I have already failed… the battle is over.” He felt so weak, and he hated it. Hel already claimed a victory in battle. He was just one of the many casualties now.

She sighed, then stood to wash her hands. He opened his eyes to watch her, and finally took in his surroundings. It was a small cottage, one he had never seen, but that he was sure Emmeryn had hastily constructed with magic to shelter him from the storm now raging in the outlands of the divine astral plane. Long strips of fabric materialized in her hands moments later, and she returned to his side. “I need you to sit up.”

He slowly did as she asked, and she set to work, seated on the bed next to him, wrapping the bandages around his torso and padding the wound with gauze. “Emmeryn… you must leave. It is not.. safe for you.”

“I see now why Naga made you leave,” she murmured, finishing the dressing and resting her forehead against his back. “Have you so lost yourself to despair that you’ve forgotten how to fight?”

“I have… three days. Three days until she comes for me.”

“Two more,” she corrected. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. But you can break the curse. Break her hold on your soul.”

“If I could…” He suddenly felt so tired, so very tired, and there wasn’t enough air in the small room. He wasn’t sure if there would be enough air in the whole world, both mortal and divine, to satisfy his need for breath, and so he gasped, slipping away into the darkness once again.

* * *

Emmeryn watched him fall, his wide shoulders slumping forward before she caught him and stood, slowly leaning him back onto the pillow. Watching him surrender to this curse so easily was unreal. Over the centuries that she had known and loved him, she had never seen him like this. To see him laid low so quickly and easily by a curse that only mortals could not resist was unnerving, to say the least.

She waited for what could have been minutes or hours to see if he would wake up, but he slept as if centuries of exhaustion had finally caught up to him. Unsure of what to do and feeling helpless, she climbed into the bed next to him, curling up to his side with her head on his chest and one wing stretched protectively over him. He stirred, only enough to place an arm around her as he always did. The gesture nearly made her cry, knowing that in a few days that touch might be gone.

Nevertheless, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.


	4. Day 2

Garon woke with Emmeryn in his arms, and hazy patches of sunlight streaming through the still-falling rain outside. In his sleep, he must have rolled over to fully embrace her. She looked so small in his muscular arms, so fragile. He could crush her with ease if he wanted, and the thought terrified him. If she stayed with him until the end… for once, he wished that he wasn’t so strong.

He would never be able to hold her like this again, he realized. It would be too much of a risk. If he became one of Hel’s monsters and ever harmed so much as a hair on her head, he could never forgive himself- but then again, when that happened, would remorse even come? Or would he hunger only for blood and death? He had never considered whether or not the fallen angels and the dead that he fought could still feel.

He thought of Emmeryn, and all the time he had shared with her. Being several millennia old, he had lived a long time, but it had only been in the past few centuries with her that he felt truly alive. He remembered her laugh, her sweet kisses, the way her face would light up when she smiled, her compassion when healing, and how perfectly she fit in his arms, just as she was doing now. He remembered how happy she had been when they had their son Xander two centuries ago. How he had been so eager to learn from both his father and mother. How she used to patiently brush out his golden curls, well nigh untameable, while humming every morning, no matter how old he grew. How they were so proud of their son when he left to fight to protect mortals in their world. How they comforted each other when their home suddenly felt so empty without him. Thinking of losing all that cut him more fiercely than any blade ever could. He didn’t even notice that he had begun crying, but he wept with full force, silent but shaking.

Emmeryn woke after a few minutes, giving her wings a small stretch as she always did before opening her eyes. She didn’t speak, for she didn’t need to. Instead, she kissed him, softly and gently, and the tenderness in her touch only brought more tears. 

Eventually he quieted, but still he kissed her, more passionately now. Reciprocating in kind, she held him as tightly as she could, and he did the same. He needed to feel her while he still could, to hold her closely without any fear. He needed her. He needed to show her how much he loved her before it was too late.

* * *

His clothes were dry now, and so Emmeryn helped him get dressed, still keeping his shirt off so that she could more easily tend to his wound. It had been disturbed some, and was now weeping a strange glowing purple fluid through the bandages. When she unwrapped it, she found that it had gotten bigger, as if it was eating away at the flesh around it, but at the same time had filled itself up with a transparent, almost gelatinous purple substance with a slight glow to it. It was a common feature amongst Hel’s soldiers, shared by Hel herself. She could see bones through it.

Garon didn’t look down. “How bad is it?”

“Worse than yesterday. Does it hurt you?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore.”

She embraced him and buried her face in his shoulder, tears staining her face and his skin. “Please, Garon. Fight this. For me. For Xander.”

He said nothing as he returned her embrace.

* * *

By nightfall, Emmeryn’s peaceful, calm smile had returned. That almost scared him. She was too comfortable. Much, much too comfortable.

“Emmeryn.” She was dressing his wound again, changing the bandages as frequently as she could. The purple fluid was worse than blood in that it wouldn’t stop, no matter how much pressure she applied or anything else she tried. “Hel will come for me tomorrow. You have to leave before she does.”

“Hel will not come if the curse is broken,” she said. “I am staying.”

“I cannot break it-”

“I cannot leave.”

“You _ will _ not.”

“No, I _ can _ not. I can’t leave you. Not like this.”

“Do not sacrifice yourself in an attempt to save me. Please.” She had always been stubbornly selfless, and this was the worst time for that quality to shine through. When she was like this, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“It is not sacrificing myself if you break the curse,” she said simply, refusing to reply to any more of his entreaties.

Finally, he sighed. “Please, Emmeryn. I love you. I could not bear to harm you.”

“I love you too,” she smiled. “And you won’t. I know you won’t.”

“Emmeryn, think of Xander-”

“Shh. Get some rest, now.” She finished tying off the bandage and kissed his forehead.

Garon closed his eyes, but even as she settled in comfortably next to him, her breathing slowly steadying to the gentle rhythm that meant she was asleep, he was more awake than ever. Of all the times for her to be stubborn… This was certainly the worst. She was doing it out of love, but by the gods, the risk was too great!


	5. Day 3

Garon did not sleep that night. He lay awake, his brow furrowed in concentration and his eyes shut tightly, sweating and straining as Emmeryn slept soundly next to him. She trusted him so, even if she knew he could be a monster by morning.

When Emmeryn woke, she greeted him with a sleepy smile. For a moment, it felt as if they were at home and starting their mornings in the usual way, with him rising early and waiting for her to wake up not to shortly after. Her smile soon turned to a frown, however, as she observed him. “You didn’t sleep, did you? You need your rest.”

“I cannot rest if you will not leave. How else will I fight Hel’s curse?”

And then she smiled again, and kissed him. “There’s the man I fell in love with. The man who never gives up.”

He did not know when Hel would come, but he anticipated her arrival throughout the day. He would be ready for her. Still he could feel the cold claws of her curse sunk into him, but as the hours passed, he felt warmer and warmer. He may not have been able to break the curse, but he would be strong enough to fight her when she came. He only hoped it would be enough.

* * *

Garon slipped into an uneasy sleep, thoroughly exhausted, by evening. His wound had entirely healed itself with the purple substance, and his wings had lost all their feathers and turned wholly black and leathery. Still, Emmeryn had hope. She would not leave.

He was frowning in his sleep, as he always did, but no more than usual. She used to tease him about how serious he always looked, even when he was resting. Emmeryn took that as a reassuring sign that the struggle was over, but still… she was not sure.

* * *

Hel appeared at nearly midnight. Emmeryn felt her before she saw her. Everything went cold, and she involuntarily shivered at the change in temperature. Turning, she saw Hel before her, towering above her. Standing between Garon and Hel, Emmeryn felt so small, but she still stood tall, not allowing her expression to betray any semblance of fear. 

“Hel.” She offered no greeting beyond that.

“Out of my way, angel. I have no business with you.” She advanced, about to push Emmeryn to the side.

"But you do.” Emmeryn stood strong, making Hel hesitate for a moment.

"And what business do I have with you?”

“I know you came to take his life, but I won’t allow it. You will not kill him.”

“And how do you intend to stop me?”

“Take mine instead. You only wish for death, do you not? Ending his life will not give you that. He is a leader in war. He will bring you soldier upon soldier to slay in his battles with you. Me, however… I am a healer. I cheat you every day of what is rightfully yours. Take my life instead and you will have won a greater victory.”

Hel narrowed her eyes, considering for a moment. “Are you so sentimental that you would throw your own life away to spare his?”

“If that is what you wish to call it, then yes. I love him and I will not let you kill him. Let my life fulfill your curse.”

“So be it.” 

Hel raised her scythe. 

* * *

Garon was tormented by nightmares as he slept. Over and over, he dreamed of blood spilled by his hands. He saw her mangled body, and he screamed. He couldn’t stop. In all of his dreams, his enemy was himself, distracting him from the true enemy.

A chill passed over his sleep, and dissipated almost as quickly as it had come. 

He slept peacefully for the rest of the night.


	6. Day 4

When Garon woke, it was not in a bed. There was birdsong, and sunlight, and life. So much life. He was not dead.

He slowly sat up, taking in his surroundings. The cottage that Emmeryn had built had vanished, and now he lay in the soft grass, cradled by the roots of a tree. Emmeryn lay a short distance away from him, her back to him. His pain was gone.

“Emmeryn.” He gently shook her. She did not move. “Emmeryn?”

Then, she opened her eyes and smiled.

* * *

Hel had come in the night, Emmeryn told him, but there had been a sudden light and she had disappeared. The curse had broken, in the end.

Hand in hand, they walked back towards Naga’s domain. Garon still bore the marks of Hel’s curse- the purple wound, and the black wings- but they no longer pained him. Hel had fought him, and left him some scars. He wore them proudly, as a reminder that Hel had tried to take him, but in the end, he had won. If not for Emmeryn, he would have lost. He knew that.

They paused at the border. “Emmeryn.” His voice was softer now, nearly back to normal.

“Yes?”

He pulled her into a kiss, soft and sweet. “I love you, Emmeryn. More than I feel I could ever properly put into words. You saved my life.”

“I love you too,” she smiled, and kissed him again.


End file.
